


find a few cul-de-sacs of my own

by sarapod (four_right_chords)



Series: to be young is to be sad, is to be high [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 15:22:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15975089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/four_right_chords/pseuds/sarapod
Summary: Neil finds out about Lucas and Max. It goes about as well as you'd expect.





	find a few cul-de-sacs of my own

**Author's Note:**

> Lucas is my favorite character in Stranger Things, but I can't write from the perspective of a 13-year-old, so have some Late Teens Lucas as seen through the eyes of Steve Harrington.
> 
> This is set in the same universe as [we will be citizens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112189), but the narrative stands entirely on its own.
> 
> Title is from "Dance Music" by The Mountain Goats, the most uplifting song about abuse ever written.

_May 1989_

Steve isn’t anywhere near as jumpy as he used to be, but the phone ringing at 10:30 at night is still enough to flood him with adrenaline so hard and fast his hands shake. Billy’s sitting closer to the kitchen, but Steve’s on his feet faster, so he’s the one who gets to the handset first and barks “hello!” way more aggressively than is probably appropriate.

“Steve?”

“ … Sinclair?” Steve says, and that’s a surprise. He and Lucas have never gotten close like he has with the other kids. Lucas doesn’t trust Billy. Steve’s gotten over Billy beating his own face in, but he can’t blame Lucas for being more suspicious. Billy was uniquely awful to Lucas when he and Max first moved to Hawkins. Since then, Billy had proven himself willing and able to stand against whatever the Upside Down had to offer, and more importantly, he had apologized for how he'd acted. Steve wasn’t there, but Max told him about it - how Billy stood in front of Lucas with his hands jammed in his pockets, staring at the asphalt and finally muttered, “My dad is - not a nice guy, okay?” When Lucas just looked more confused, Billy said, “He doesn't like - he wouldn’t - I was supposed to keep Max away from - ” He huffed a frustrated sigh. “I was just looking out for my own ass,” he said. “You’re not - you’re fine.”

Lucas had accepted the apology - more out of bafflement than anything else, Steve personally thinks - and Billy never fucked with him again. Still, Lucas just … doesn’t trust him. Or, by extension, Steve.

“Yeah,” Lucas says, and Steve registers that his voice is shaking. “Yeah, I - me and Max, can we come stay with you and Billy? Like, now? Right now?” It all comes out in a rush, so fast that Steve has to take a second to process what was actually said.

“ … What?” is what he finally lands on in response, because he was dozing on the couch when Lucas called and the adrenaline is still swirling sickly in his guts and also, seriously, _what?_

“Steve, come on, please,” and okay, shit. Lucas sounds frantic.

Steve gusts out a breath, scrubs his free hand over his face. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “Just - just get here and we’ll work everything out.”

Lucas exhales heavily in what has to be relief. “Thank you,” he says. “We’ll see you later tonight.” He hangs up before Steve can say anything else; as Steve stares at the handset in bewilderment, it occurs to him that the sound he heard right before Lucas hung up was a car horn, which means Lucas was probably on a pay phone.

"Babe?” he hears coming muzzily from the living room. “The fuck wuzzat?”

Steve walks back into the living room and sits down on the couch next to Billy. “Your sister and her boyfriend, actually,” he says. “They’re coming here.”

“What?” Billy says, sitting up and blinking at Steve with the gaze of a man who has just been ripped from a really comfortable doze. “Max and Lucas? When?”

“Now,” Steve says. He lifts his hands in bafflement, drops them. “Right now, apparently.”

Billy just squints at him, then says, “ … the fuck?”

“I have no idea, babe,” Steve says. “No idea.” He scrubs at his face again, then looks at the clock and does some mental math. It’s a three hour drive from Hawkins to Chicago, and he doesn’t know where Lucas was calling from, but he knows him well enough to know that Lucas doesn’t have a headstrong bone in his body. He wouldn’t have gone far without a plan. So if that plan was Billy and Steve, Steve assumes most of three hours is still in front of Lucas and Max. That leaves three hours for Billy and Steve to twiddle their thumbs and wait.

So Steve gets up and heads to the kitchen. “What’re you doing?” Billy calls after him.

“Making a pot of coffee,” Steve tosses over his shoulder. “Seems like we’re going to be up for awhile.”

 

* * *

 

Max at 17 is basically the same size she was when she and Billy moved to Hawkins, but Lucas started shooting up sometime in the 10th grade and is now comfortably over six feet tall. When Steve opens the door to let them in, Max is tucked up against Lucas’s side, practically wrapped in him. Her face comes up to his rib cage. She looks like she’s been crying for hours.

Billy’s expression is grim as he points the kids toward the couch. Steve’s not sure how he plans to go about it, but he knows what Billy’s going to say. He and Steve had been working on their first cup of coffee about fifteen minutes after Steve hung up with Lucas when Billy’s eyes widened and he abruptly started cursing. Steve, used to Billy’s tendency to process in silence, react out loud, and explain after the fact, sat back and waited.

“Shit,” Billy snapped. “Shit, babe, I - ” His hands flexed around his mug. Steve kept waiting.

Billy visibly took a second to compose himself, then said, “Neil found out. That’s gotta be it,” and Steve swore, because of course. What else would send Lucas and Max screaming across state lines but not disturb El, Mike, Dustin, or Will?

“God,” Steve muttered, “he must have lost his mind.” Neil couldn’t actually stop Max being friends with Lucas, but he had certainly tried. No one was ever under any illusions about how he’d take the news of their relationship.

“He’s never hit Max,” Billy said through his teeth. “I kind of thought he never would. But - ”

“Yeah,” Steve said, and went to check that they had enough ice for an ice pack.

Now Billy ushers Lucas and Max to the couch, and it’s only when they pull apart slightly to sit that the damage to her right eye is visible. There’s a cut over her eyebrow that it looks like Lucas tried to stanch with gas station paper towels, and a bruise is already coming up all around. It’s pretty swollen. Steve’s hand tightens on the doorframe, but he doesn’t let himself react beyond that, even though he wants to. He’s trying to be calm and collected for Lucas and Max.

Billy is not quite so measured. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters, and leans in from where he’s seated on the edge of the coffee table. “Let me see - no, come here, it’s okay.” Steve turns away and busies himself with fixing an ice pack for Max and dampening a kitchen towel so she can wipe her face. When he gets back to the living room, Billy takes the towel out of his hands and starts cleaning Max up himself. He’s matter-of-fact and efficient about it; Steve hates to think how many times he had to do this for himself. Lucas steadies her while Billy wipes the blood off, his hand on her chin. The expression on his face is - Steve doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s bad. Steve puts down the ice pack on the table and goes back to the kitchen to fix Lucas and Max cups of coffee.

He returns in time to see Max bat Billy’s hand away from where he’s holding the ice pack to her face. She holds it there herself, settling more firmly into Lucas’s side. His hand goes automatically to her hair. They’re both looking at Billy; neither of them have said much since they arrived.

Billy’s resting his elbows on his knees, hands laced in front of him. “He found out,” Billy says, and Lucas nods. Max’s mouth is wobbling, but her chin is jutting out as she nods too. “Tell me what happened,” Billy says simply, and waits.

It’s Max who speaks. She smiles waveringly at Steve, accepts the coffee he presses into her hand. He sets Lucas’s on the table. “We wanted to go to prom,” she says softly, and Billy swears.

“Maxine - ” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“You asked,” she snaps, a hint of her usual fire coming through, and Billy subsides. “We wanted to go to prom,” she continues, “and I mean - it’s not like we’re any kind of actual secret!” She sounds defensive.

“So what did you do, you brought him home?” Billy asks. He’s talking about Lucas like he isn’t there, which (Steve has been told) is one of the many things about him Lucas dislikes. It’s not actually personal, that’s just how Billy is - he does it to everyone, including, sometimes, Steve - but it’s not Steve’s favorite thing either.

Max presses closer to Lucas’s side and looks anywhere but at Billy. “Not exactly,” she mutters.

Lucas cuts in. “She wanted to,” he says, “but - ” He looks at Billy like he thinks he’ll understand, and Billy just nods. “So we compromised,” Lucas continues. “She was gonna tell them without me there but I’d be right outside.”

“He was in the yard,” Max says. “So if it went bad I’d be able to leave with him quick, and if it went good he could just go home.”

Billy ducks his head, runs his hands through his short hair like he’s trying to hold his brain in. “This was your idea of a plan?” he asks. “Christ, Maxine.”

“I’m fucking sorry, okay?” she snaps, looking like she’s going to start crying again while also yelling. “I never had to - before - ” She closes her eyes for a second, then opens them, and she looks a little calmer. “It was the best I could come up with,” she says, and looks away guiltily.

Steve’s watching her darting eyes, the way Lucas is looking at her but not making eye contact, and something clicks in his brain. “You didn’t want to,” he says to Lucas. “You didn’t want to tell them.”

Lucas sets his jaw and pulls Max closer. At seventeen they’re already a united front. “We - didn’t agree on that part,” he says tightly. “But Neil’s not my stepfather, so … ” He lets the sentence hang. Max sniffles and digs in her pocket for some tissues, blows her nose.

“Anyway, it - he - he didn’t like it,” Max says quietly. She says it to the floor, more or less; Lucas is still stroking her hair. “So we left.”

“At what point in him not liking it did this happen?” Billy asks, gesturing at Max’s face.

“Right before we left,” she whispers.

When it becomes clear she’s not going to say any more, Billy turns to Lucas, exasperation writ in every line of his face. “Help me out, Sinclair,” he says tightly.

Lucas sighs heavily. “Neil hit her,” he says. “I’d heard him yelling for awhile so I snuck around to the back door, just in case. Then I heard her scream, so I came in through the back and tackled him. He didn’t see it coming, so he was dazed for a second. I grabbed Max and we took off.” He shrugs. “That’s basically it.”

Billy looks at Max. “Maxine?”

She nods, small and quick. “Yeah. That’s it.”

Steve feels uncomfortably close to a flashback. He can imagine everything - the screaming, tires peeling as Lucas sped off as quickly as he could, blood pouring down Max’s face. Lucas reaching across the seat, pressing his hand to where she’s hemorrhaging (facial wounds, though almost never serious, bleed like arteries). Her sobbing, him snapping, Hawkins screeching past at 95 mph as he drove for the highway like the hounds of hell were chasing him. As Steve has actually seen what Lucas looks like when the hounds of hell are chasing him, it’s not a reach.

Max’s face is hidden in Lucas’s jacket, which Steve only now realizes is covered in blood, as is her sweatshirt. He steps forward and crouches down, bringing him below Max and Lucas’s sightlines as though they’re still the gawky kids he befriended four years ago and not teenagers teetering on the edge of adulthood. “Hey,” he says softly, and they both look at him. “Give me your jacket and your shirt,” he says. “I’ll put them to soak in the tub and maybe we’ll be able to get some of the blood out.” He looks over at Billy. “Bill, can you get them some clothes?”

The next little while is taken up in absurdly domestic pursuits: Steve setting up a bucket filled with cold water, salt, and hydrogen peroxide and putting their clothes to soak; Max making another pass at her face with a wet towel and carefully working the dried blood out of her hair; Billy rummaging up two old sweatshirts, one of Steve’s for Lucas (Steve has longer limbs) and one of his for Max. Finally, when there’s no more puttering to do and they’re all standing kind of uselessly in the living room, Billy says, “I think me and Max need to talk for awhile. Harrington - ”

“Me and Lucas will go get some air,” Steve says.

“Max - ” Lucas starts, but she shakes her head.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Give us a little time.”

Lucas looks conflicted, eventually scuffing the toe of his sneaker along the floor and jamming his hands in his pockets. “Okay,” he says quietly, to Steve and Billy’s baseboard.

Max sighs, then gets up and crosses the room to where he’s standing. She has to reach above her head to get Lucas’s face in her hands, but she manages it. “It’s okay,” she says quietly, and goes on tiptoe to kiss him. “I’ll be fine.”

Lucas follows Steve out then, and if he’s not happy - because of fucking course he’s not happy - he looks marginally more settled in his skin.

 

* * *

 

When Steve had said that he and Lucas would go get some air, he’d forgotten that it was nearly 2 AM. He takes Lucas to the roof instead, where he is mildly appalled to see this  _fucking child_ he's known since he was  _twelve_ take out a cigarette and light up.

“You know these things’ll kill you,” Steve says, extending his hand for a drag.

Lucas blows smoke up at the stars, or at least at the orange glow where the stars should be. Chicago night skies are weird as hell. “Fuck it,” he says. “If I can make it through literal demons from hell, a few cigarettes shouldn’t be too bad.” Steve’s pretty sure he’s not just talking about Demodogs.

Lucas passes the cigarette to Steve and leans back, resting his weight on his hands and looking at the sky. They smoke in companionable silence for awhile before Lucas says, “So. You and Billy.”

Steve’s been expecting this. He and Billy never meant to tell the kids about themselves, but El rendered that plan moot pretty fucking fast. It happened at the Byers’ while the Party was decompressing after Demodog patrol, maybe a week after Billy (with more balls than Steve can even imagine) told Steve how he felt about him. They’d been fucking for awhile, and Steve had been dealing with his feelings about it for pretty much the whole time, but mutual feelings - those were new. So a week later Steve handed Billy a cigarette at Joyce’s kitchen table, their fingers brushed, and El very matter-of-factly looked at them and said, “Love.”

Billy dropped the cigarette. The room very immediately went silent. Steve hoped against hope that a Gate just the size of him personally might open under his chair and get him out of the situation, but no such luck.

Things actually worked out fine, if you don’t count a horribly mortifying conversation about safe sex with Joyce and Hopper, or Will coming directly to Billy and Steve with A Lot of Questions pretty much the second he realized he could. They are insanely lucky. But Steve’s never felt there was any reason to test that luck, so he and Billy have continued keeping their hands to themselves where straight people can see them and more or less carrying on as they had before they got together. Even though everyone knows about him and Billy, it’s not due to anything Steve’s ever said or done, and he’d prefer to keep it that way.

But there’s a sense in which he’s been waiting for this for awhile. Being gay isn’t remotely the same as being in an interracial relationship, but it’s probably the closest point of comparison Lucas has for being different in Hawkins. So Steve just says, “Yeah,” and waits.

Lucas is quiet for a second, then says, “How did you know it was worth it?”

Steve’s eyebrows fly up. Jesus. “Uh,” he says eloquently, then stops.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas says in a rush, and it’s clear he thinks he’s overstepped. “You don’t have to - ”

“No,” Steve says, “it’s okay. Just. Fucking hell, Lucas. That’s not the question I was expecting to answer.” He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep pull on his cigarette, then says, “You really wanna know?”

“Obviously, man,” Lucas says, and the impatience that’s normally threaded through everything he says appears for the first time tonight. Steve is so relieved that he almost wants to provoke him more just to hear it, but he’s not stupid enough to go down that road.

“You remember when Nancy and Jonathan got together?” he asks.

“Yeah, of course,” Lucas says. He sounds confused.

“She was dating me before,” Steve says helpfully.

“ … Yeah, man, I remember,” Lucas says. His confusion is only growing. “I was there.”

“She didn’t give a shit,” Steve continues. “She really didn’t care. She loved him, and she didn’t love me anymore, and she didn’t care what anyone said about it.” He sighs. “I wish I could have been like that with Billy, but I wasn’t. I was scared shitless. He asked me to move out here with him and I didn’t have anything else going on - plus I really fucking wanted to - but I thought about telling my parents, and … ” He exhales, pushes a hand through his hair again. “Anyway, I couldn’t imagine the conversation. Like, obviously I wasn’t going to tell them what was really going on, but it was still the scariest fucking thing. They’re not idiots, they can read between the lines. So I figured I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t go with him. I was going to tell him.” He’s not looking at Lucas, but he can tell Lucas’s eyes are glued to him. He stubs his cigarette out on the ledge, watches the glowing embers fade. “We had plans that night, we were going to meet at the quarry, and I decided I was going to tell him then. I thought I was ready to tell him. But when it was time to leave my house and meet him, I started thinking about what I was gonna say, and I threw up.”

“You threw up,” Lucas repeats. He sounds like he can barely believe it. Which, fair - he’s seen Steve crush a Demodog’s skull with a nail bat without batting an eye.

“Ayup,” Steve says. He pops the p. “Barely made it to the bathroom, I was a fucking wreck. By the time I got to the quarry I’d had to pull over twice to puke. When he saw me he almost took me to the hospital.” He laughs, remembering. “So what the fuck could I do? I told my parents. And it was fucking terrible, but - but not as bad as being without him.” He looks at Lucas out of the corner of his eye; Lucas is looking at nothing, processing.

“So … what,” Lucas says eventually, “I should stay with Max if the thought of breaking up with her makes me puke?”

“I mean. Kind of,” Steve says. “I don’t know. Your situation is different. Your risks are different. What I know is that when I thought about breaking up with Billy, really thought about it, I basically puked for two hours. Going with him was terrifying, but the thought of not going with him made me literally sick.”

Lucas is quiet for a minute. Then he says, “That’s insane, Steve.”

Steve shrugs. “You asked.” He lays back on the roof, accepts another cigarette from Lucas when it drifts into his line of vision. They stay there for awhile in silence, smoking and watching planes coming into O’Hare and thinking about nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

When they finally go downstairs, the nighttime cold soaked into their bones, Lucas fixes his gaze on Billy. “That’s who you puked over,” he says to Steve. It’s not a question. “Him.”

Steve shrugs. Then, darting his eyes at Billy, he makes eye contact with the floor and decides to be brave. “He’s got a great body,” he mumbles. He can feel himself turning beet red. “Lot to lose, there.”

When he dares to look up, Lucas is making the exact same grossed-out face he makes at Joyce and Hopper or Nancy and Jonathan. “I did _not_ need to hear that, man,” he says, and Steve grins.

Billy raises his eyebrows at Lucas and says, " _He_  took care of your girlfriend while you were having a heart-to-heart with Harrington.” He gestures to where Max is curled up on the couch next to him. She’s dozing as much as someone can with an ice pack on their face, which is to say she looks up right at that moment and says, “Lucas?”

Lucas immediately crosses to the couch and crouches down in front of it, stroking Max’s hair out of her face. Steve can’t see his expression, but he can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “Hey.” It reminds him of how Billy sounds when he wakes Steve in the morning.

Billy says abruptly to Lucas, “You know she can’t go back yet. Not without - I don’t know, but we’ll have to figure something out because she can’t just go back.”

Lucas nods. “I know.”

“And we’ll have to figure something out for you too,” Billy says.

Lucas tenses. “You don’t have to - ”

“Jesus, Sinclair,” Billy groans, pushing his hands through his hair. “I’m talking about keeping my dad away from you. Keeping your ass safe too.”

“Wait a fucking second,” Max says, cutting in before Lucas can react. “I'm sitting right fucking here, Billy! You can't just decide what's going to happen to me without asking!”

Billy glares at her. He hasn't let go of her ankle since Steve and Lucas came back from the roof. “Big fucking words from someone who’s still bleeding from the face, Maxine.”

Lucas turns away from the aggressively bickering siblings - because that's all it actually is between Max and Billy, it just sounds worse - and, to Steve's astonishment, _rolls his fucking eyes._  It's all Steve can do not to burst out laughing. That's exactly how he feels when this happens, every single time. He never thought about what it might be like to have someone to share it with.

He realizes with a sort of bemused interest that Lucas is basically his brother-in-law. Well. Out-of-law. It's not a relationship that had ever crossed Steve's mind before. He thinks he might like it.

**Author's Note:**

> So, fandom is complicated, right?
> 
> I hate the character of Billy Hargrove as rendered by the Duffers. I spent all of season 2 devoutly wishing he'd get eaten by a Demodog. As a mental health professional, I'm on board with the idea that hurt people hurt people, but Billy embodies the broadest strokes and least sophisticated rendering of that idea. He is terrible and uninteresting and emblematic of everything that's wrong with the Duffers' creative process.
> 
> But then fandom happened. And as we did with Draco Malfoy a hundred years ago, fandom found an entirely different character within Billy Hargrove. I was wildly uncomfortable with it at first, but the more I read it, the more I liked it. There are some really talented people in Stranger Things fandom who do amazing work with the ideas of trauma that the Duffers only glance at. I came to find fandom!Billy extremely interesting. I wrote [we will be citizens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112189). I wrote this.
> 
> And then I rewatched all of Stranger Things, and I was shocked by how awful and irredeemable Billy is, as written by the Duffers. My memory for media isn't great, so while I remembered having a lot of issues with the character, I hadn't actually held on to what they were. Billy is ... bad. He's a mess. He's racist and vicious and violent. And I looked back at this piece of writing I'd done and felt very conflicted. What Billy does to Lucas is horrifying and inexcusable, and I was troubled by the idea that I'd papered over how awful it was so I could write my little story. 
> 
> I believe people can be redeemed. I don't know that Billy _as written by the Duffers_ can be, and I'm not super interested in that happening. I do think Billy _as rendered by fandom_ is complex and interesting and has a lot more lurking within him than canon!Billy, and I'm not willing to turn my back on that character composite. What I ultimately tried to do here is honor the awfulness of the thing canon!Billy did, honor the harm it would likely have done to Lucas, while working with my own fanon!Billy. How well I succeeded isn't for me to say.


End file.
